Monolith and Retro are first party companies dude. Insomniac was an example of Sony second party.

I suspect that you're confusing Xenoblade with either Xenosaga or Baten Kaitos, both of which were made by Monolith Soft for Namco Bandai. Xenoblade is not part of the Xenosaga series of games. It was called Xenoblade as a reference to that series, yes, but only because they were both made by Tetsuya Takahashi (as was the original Xenogears, which is owned by Square Enix). Indeed, the original name for Xenoblade was Monado: Beginning of the World.

EDIT: And yes, Namco Bandai sold its controlling shares in Monolith Soft to Nintendo, back in 2007.

Yeah, if I recall correctly Namco sold 80% of Monolith to Nintendo back not long after the start of the generation.  I think they still own 16% of the studio, which probably explains why they still developed a few Super Robot Wars and DBZ games after the Nintendo acquisition.  At the moment they are working on an unnannounced game (I personally think it is a 3rd Baten Kaitos game) and with Banpresto on Project X Zone for the 3DS (presumably for Namco).

They'll get them anyway. Just not a lot if them. You can't really applaud them either way.

It's not the developer that defines an IP as first-party, but the IP ownership.

Beyond that, Naughty Dog and Polyphony Digital are subsidiaries of Sony, just as Monolith Soft is a subsidiary of Nintendo. Indeed, there's absolutely no way to get around Polyphony Digital being part of Sony, as it actually began as a development group within SCE, and got a name change after the success of the GT series. Naughty Dog, at least, started out as an independent studio, being bought by Sony back in 2001.

Both Uncharted and GT are owned by Sony, and Xenoblade is owned by Nintendo. Not sure about ownership of the Xenosaga IP, as it was made by Monolith Soft but published by Namco, and thus may remain owned by Namco. The typical test of ownership is whether it gets either a new developer or a new publisher - so, for instance, Baten Kaitos was published by Namco, but the sequel was published by Nintendo. This indicates that Monolith Soft owned the IP. On the other hand, Crash Bandicoot was made by Naughty Dog, but when Naughty Dog was bought by Sony, Eurocom (and then Traveller's Tales and others) took over development, for Universal Interactive Studios, which became Vivendi, which became Sierra, which became Activision. So Activision owns the IP, not Naughty Dog.

ok then...

buh?  did i not just get done reading a thread (that you posted in) about losing the hardcore and the blame on third parties.

..financially incentives is fundamental to why third parties gravitate to MSony over nintendo. 

You're about six years late on that. Nintendo bought Monolith Soft outright in 2006, but Namco does retain some share, as Mr. T-Tar pointed out.

THis,  ALl you Ninty fans that a cheering this on, that means i shouldnt expect to hear any of you complaining when game a and/or b doesnt make it to Wii U. You'll know exactly why it didnt happen

Meh, I don't care that much about exclusives, as long as I GET the games, and they play as good as the other console versions. The controller will allow for a unique enough experience that it will be almost like an exclusive game anyway, even if it is on other platforms.